Finding your Essay's Heartbeat
An eight-part masterclass in writing a perfect personal essay with Andrea Firth, editor at Brevity
Join Andrea A. Firth for a masterclass in creative non-fiction with Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat. During this course, we’ll be reading and discussing a wide range of personal essays and writing our own essays, too.
Sometimes, a personal essay requires us to re-imagine what happened in the past because our memories are incomplete, but we’ll still be writing true stories as best we can. In this workshop, we’re going to take a deep dive into what makes an essay work and discover what your personal story is about and what it means.
Lessons
About The Instructor
Andrea A. Firth is an Editor at Brevity Blog and cofounder of Diablo Writers’ Workshop where she teaches creative writing, provides editorial consulting, and supports a vibrant writing community. Andrea has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California. She was a finalist for The Missouri Review's 2021 Perkoff Prize in nonfiction, and her work has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Allium, Please See Me, Motherwell, The Coachella Review, Brevity Blog among others. She has also worked as journalist, was a longtime contributor to Oakland Magazine, and has published hundreds of articles in news outlets and magazines. Learn more about her and read her recent work at www.andreaafirth.com.
Hi Vedika. Thanks! and yes more great essays to come. And yes, we'll follow a six-art prompt in Lesson #6 that will guide you to get a full essay down in one sitting. Plus I'll provide ideas to get you writing along the way too. Happy to have you here.
Hi, Andrea,
Just read the first two essays you cited and I'm positively busting to talk about them. Already left a comment at Brevity. They're brilliant, and in several places they hang on a sentence you could almost miss if you're not paying attention. THANK YOU for bringing them to our attention.